Two women, blindfolded, as well as a girl and a baby summarily executed by soldiers.
This scene, filmed in 2015 in the far north of Cameroon and broadcast on social networks, had caused a real scandal.
On Monday September 21, five years after the incident, the Yaoundé military court sentenced five soldiers to prison terms for "assassination".
The government initially denied the involvement of its army, before arresting seven suspects.
All had pleaded not guilty but only two were acquitted.
The drama took place in 2015 in the town of Zeleved, in the Far North of Cameroon, where the Nigerian jihadist group Boko Haram and a dissident branch have increased deadly attacks in recent years against civilians and the army.
A very real "fake news"
When the video went viral on social networks in 2018, the power of President Paul Biya, at the head of Cameroon since 1982, as well as the army had firmly denied the involvement of their soldiers, speaking of "fake-news" and "horrible trickery".
But he retracted in August 2018, announcing the arrest of seven soldiers.
Monday, September 21, the Yaoundé military court delivered its verdict after many adjournments of the trial.
Three soldiers, Ciriaque Hilaire Bytlaya, Jean Tchanga and Barnabas Donossou, were found "guilty of the acts of coaction of assassination", before being each sentenced to 10 years in prison.
The same sentence was inflicted on Captain Étienne Fabassou, head of the accused at the time of the facts, found guilty of "complicity in murder".
A fifth soldier, Ghislain Ntienche, for his part, was sentenced to two years in prison for "violation of instructions" in the context of the same case.
Captain Fabassou's lawyer has already announced that he intends to appeal.
According to him, the legal procedure was not followed because "from the investigation to the trial phase through the judicial information, the beneficiaries of the victims have never appeared and were not heard" .
International outcry
The attacks in the Far North are the work of Boko Haram or Iswap (the Islamic State group in West Africa, according to its acronym in English), which have increased in recent years, very deadly assaults targeting soldiers and civilians in this region of Cameroon as in the bordering regions of Nigeria, Chad and Niger, on the rim of Lake Chad.
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International human rights organizations also regularly denounce atrocities and crimes committed against civilians by the security forces in Cameroon, in the Far North but also in the two regions of the North West and the South West.
In these two predominantly English-speaking regions, the army has been fighting armed independence groups for three years.
In February, three Cameroonian soldiers were charged with the "murder" of at least 23 civilians, according to the UN, including 10 children, in a village in the English-speaking areas, Ngarbuh, a massacre that sparked an international outcry, forcing the to be able to admit the responsibility of its soldiers, after having denied it for a long time.
The Boko Haram insurgency began in 2009 in northeastern Nigeria before spreading to neighboring countries, Cameroon, Niger and Chad.
Since that date, more than 36,000 people (mainly in Nigeria) have been killed, and 3 million have had to flee their homes, according to the UN.
In 2016, the group split into two branches: the faction led by its historic leader, Abubakar Shekau, and Iswap, affiliated with the Islamic State group.
With AFP
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